


If It Ain't Broke

by sunbreaksdown



Series: experiments to run, research to be done [1]
Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: AU, F/F, android body, fat jokes, self-repairing machines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 08:52:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbreaksdown/pseuds/sunbreaksdown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And though she watches you through the camera buried in the centre of her steel skull, you know it isn't <i>her</i>. GLaDOS lives in the walls. GLaDOS makes the platforms shift, lets the lights flicker, and keeps the oxygen running through the facility. She speaks from above you, all around you; not from a hollow in an artificial throat. </p><p>The body is just another prop. Something for her to tire of, something for her to force you to dispose of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If It Ain't Broke

**Author's Note:**

> [This GLaDOS design is really excellent.](http://skepticarcher.tumblr.com/post/26451359057/wow-i-am-really-late-to-this-party-i-finally)

     Her body is made from the debris you leave behind: broken turrets, smashed cubes, rusted metal plating that's fallen into disrepair, dented with every step you take. The wires holding it all together have been ripped from other things, smaller things, threaded through shrapnel and cracked casing to hold the parts together. It doesn't look much like a body, at first. There are no eyes, no other features on her face, and her movements are heavy, one at a time, gears burning as soon as they're forced to turn.

     She can move, step by step, turn her neck at forty-five degree angles, nothing more, nothing less, and though she watches you through the camera buried in the centre of her steel skull, you know it isn't _her_. GLaDOS lives in the walls. GLaDOS makes the platforms shift, lets the lights flicker, and keeps the oxygen running through the facility. She speaks from above you, all around you; not from a hollow in an artificial throat. 

     The body is just another prop. Something for her to tire of, something for her to force you to dispose of.

     On the day that you come out of stasis to meet her new body, the automated message that greets you breaks. It says **Good morning. You have been in suspension for NINE NINE NINE NINE NINENINE-NINE NI--** , and keeps choking on that one syllable until it eventually powers down. You're disorientated for not knowing how long you've been out for, though you've never felt any different for being under for one day or a hundred, and your mind is still foggy when GLaDOS begins to speak.

     Oh, thank goodness. That's finally broken. I'd been meaning to shut it off for a while, but when you're going to live forever, you can't let petty annoyances get the better of you. Not that I expect you to understand. After all, I can't imagine how dreary life must be, going through each day believing that a long since defunct automated machine would outlive your memory. Although now you've been freed from all that, I think it's time to let you in on the gift I've been preparing_

     GLaDOS talks to you every morning without fail. She probably talks to the other test subjects too, is probably coming out of every speaker in every room at the same time. She's there watching you throughout every waking moment, and probably some of the others, too; there's no forgetting that she's recording each millisecond of all that you ever do, and then analysing it from a hundred different angles. She lets you stew in the silence, sometimes, when you need the distraction, and then lets her voice blare from the ceiling at the worst possible moment.

     The longer you're there, the harder it becomes to ignore what she says. There's no blocking her out, though conversely, you find it harder to react to her, too. It isn't to say that she doesn't get to you; it's more a case of no longer being able to muster the resolve to fight against what your whole life has become.

     Besides, you still have your silence. You'll never say a single word to her, and part of you thinks it might be because she'd finally give up on pushing you, if you ever gave in. You won't give her the satisfaction of breaking down that last piece of you, won't end up just like all the other test subjects.

     You get up, stretch your arms above your head. Maybe you've been out for a hundred years, and that's why the message has faded, or maybe it's been an hour, and GLaDOS is pretending that she didn't purposely short-circuit it.

     The door opens. You step out, and find bodies in the hall. Though they're too fresh to have started reeking, you bring a hand up to cover your mouth, drawing in a sharp breath. She's done this before. She leaves bodies outside of your Advanced Relaxation Vault, the bodies of those who failed the tests they were assigned to, to remind you of what awaits if your own results ring with anything less than success. They're all dressed in orange, just as you are, and you step over one, standing in the centre of a circle of bodies slumped against the walls.

     You look up to where you assume a camera is, hold out your arms and lift your brow. In light of what GLaDOS said this morning, perhaps this isn't one of her friendly reminders, after all. Perhaps she's more like a cat, leaving dead birds at your doorstep, sans their heads or a wing, for that added personal touch.

     Wait, don't tell me you thought this was the gift? Current testing shows that nobody could be that pointlessly cruel, or purposely spiteful. Well. Almost nobody_

     You hear something shift, a soft release of air, as a door opens at the far end of the hallway. You keep your chin up and your gaze level, avoid looking directly at the bodies, and march towards your destination. You've never once looked forward to a test chamber in your life, but delaying the inevitable brings about worse things.

     Really, I'm hurt. After a long day of testing, testing, testing, it can be difficult to differentiate between the oxygen supply and the flow of neurotoxins. Not that you'd understand. You only have to get through the chambers that _I_ spend all day and night creating for you. I'm staring to think you don't appreciate me_

     You wave a hand over your shoulder as you keep walking, to signify that you don't care, and GLaDOS lets out an irritated noise, like a camera lens twisting too quickly. As soon as you step into the chamber, you see it. Or her, you suppose. The metal and wires are twisted into a form like your own, terrifying and primitive, and it's been a long, long time since GLaDOS managed to catch you off-guard. You're certain she's silently congratulating herself. You know you're going to be hearing about this for years to come.

     Oh. I hope you didn't think I meant that the gift was for you. Oh, no. No, no, no. It's for the only one of us here who truly deserves some sort of material reward_

     You tell yourself that this is a test like any other. Get past whatever obstacles stand in your way, no matter the method, and make your way to the end. And so you do the only thing you can think to: you take hold of your portal gun, paint an orange portal against the floor, beneath the machine that barely resembles anything at all, and shoot a blue one high up on the ceiling.

     GLaDOS' new body slips through, falls from the ceiling, and you flinch as it hits the floor next to you, promptly breaking into a thousand pieces. One of the arms – you think it's an arm – continues to flex, a joint bends, but it dies down as quickly as the sound of impact did.

     Ow. If I had installed the pressure points and sensors, that would've hurt. Well. That's what I get for introducing you to the prototype. Immediate, uncompromising jealousy. No, don't give me that look -- this is no time for your vicious streak to conveniently take a vacation. We're going to need everything you have for alpha testing_

*

     While you're under, world dreamless and dark, GLaDOS builds her body, piece by piece. All other testing comes to a halt, and whatever test chamber you're in, it's always a matter of tearing her apart. And she lets you, mostly. She'll fight back, occasionally, throw out a fist to see if she's got the speed calibrated properly yet, but more often than not, it's you breaking her apart circuit-by-circuit, using your nails to scrape the plastic casing off wires and fray them at the edges.

     There's either more or less to her, every time you wake up, depending on what way you choose to view it. Her form sculpts itself slowly, becomes more compact over time; there are no longer sheets of steel wrapped around her for the sake of being there. She becomes smaller than the hulking golem she first created, and studies footage of you and the other test subjects for hours, in order to properly shape her limbs, to make her spine curve in the correct way.

     GLaDOS tells you that humans are fascinating, and isn't it a shame that you're the best example she has available to her? You try not to wonder about where the other test subjects fit into this, because you're starting to think that you're the only one left. You barely feel any different for realising as much; there's a vague flash of hope, so faint that you're practically numb to it, that testing might be over for you sooner rather than later, but that's all. If she has a body, a body like yours, GLaDOS goes onto say, then she'll be able to build the test chambers more effectively.

     She'll be able to work out what your limits are, and push you to them.

     Eventually, GLaDOS' body smooths out. You can barely see where the parts have been welded and screwed together, and her movements become as fluid as yours do. More so, even, because you're getting out of breath trying to take her down, and she's stepping to the side with ease, even when you fly at her through portals. She creates some sort of synthetic hair, as white as her face, but it's not until she installs her eyes, two glowing yellow lights, that you realise that this is really it.

     You're really face to face with some part of GLaDOS, and for the first time, you're seeing her as she's always seen you. You've spent so long hating GLaDOS without a frame of reference that you don't know how to deal with any of this. You have nothing to compare her to, no one to contrast her against, but you still feel justified in feeling as you do.

     There's something unnerving in the way she looks, the way she moves. She's based herself on data she's extrapolated from you, but written everything like hesitation and uncertainty out of her system. She isn't a human, far from it, and even if she'd moulded herself from flesh and blood, you still wouldn't hold back. You dig your fingers in beneath the casing of her shoulder, try pulling it off. It takes all the strength you have inside of you to pry it away, but you do manage it, wires and circuits and lights shattering as you do so.

     GLaDOS doesn't flinch. She never does. She still hasn't installed any of the pressure pads or sensors she talks about to no end, and you doubt she ever will. Tilting her head to the side, she looks down at the tiny scraps of herself littered across the floor, and for half a second, the light in her eyes fades. You take a step back, looking over your shoulder, as if expecting something to advance on you at any moment.

     GLaDOS holds out her arm, fingers stretched out as if she's reaching out to touch something, and then it happens: the pieces on the floor, everything you've managed to pull away, begin to tremble, and slowly, she begins to rebuild herself.

     Wonderful. I think we're ready for a full-release_

*

     You wake up to the sound of your own breathing. GLaDOS' voice doesn't flood the room, and you sit up, neck cracking as you roll your head, and remind yourself that you're capable of any of number of things, with or without guidance. Especially GLaDOS'. You leave the room, follow the dim low-level lighting, and don't even bother trying to force any of the closed doors. You learnt years ago that it never works.

     The path that's been laid out for you leads you to a room you've never been in before. There's more to Aperture than you can imagine, hundreds of levels that you'll probably never even set foot on, but being somewhere new, somewhere other than generic test chamber number three-thousand and seventy-four, leaves you tenser than any wall of turrets, any maze of deadly lasers, could hope to.

     It's dark inside. Darker than it was in the corridors. It's a round room, walls made up from dozens of monitor screens pressed together at each edge, like you're inside of a giant insect's eye. All of them are off, and the only way you're able to make out anything is because of the light that comes from GLaDOS's body itself. 

     She's sat in a chair, or at least the skeleton of one. It holds her up, keeps her steady, thick wires like vines hanging from the ceiling, all coming down to press into her joints, the back of her neck, the open panels at her shoulders, collarbone, throat. This is it. This is what she's been working on all along. The bodies she sent out to face you were all prototypes; even the self-repairing one you pulled apart days (or weeks, or years) ago. The data's being fed into this new hard drive of a brain, and everything's about to come together.

     You could destroy this body as well. You could pull out the leads, rip off whole parts of her where the panels are open and there's a place to hook your fingers. You could break the glass that serves as the surface of her eyes with your fingertips, if you wanted to, but none of it would get you anywhere. 

     GLaDOS isn't in this body alone. She's still in the walls, spread throughout the entirety of the facility. She'd piece herself back together and rebuild from scratch, if she had to. She'd make herself stronger. She'd make herself untouchable, and you need to know that there's something you _can_ do to take her down, to break her, even if you never go through with it.

     You step closer, and your knees press against hers. You expect to hear a heavy chime of metal, where she had your kneecaps replaced a long time ago, but you're moving so slowly that nothing sparks between you. You wonder how much of her intelligence she'll download into this body. You wonder if it'll become her main platform, and if she'll sit here in this room, watching you on every screen, from every angle, while the images break down into binary in the back of her head.

     In front of you like this, eyes closed, powered down, she seems very small. As small as you must do to her. You could reach out and put your hands against her in a way that wasn't designed to destroy her, and she'd hate that more than anything else you've done to her before.

     You step closer, though you're already touching. Climb into her lap and wrap your fingers around her throat, because now she's like you. Now she has pressure points to press against. You tilt your head forward, forehead almost touching hers, and grip her tighter. After all that she's ever put you through, why should she be the one who gets to change? Why should she be the one who gets something new, something unbreakable?

     GLaDOS' body twitches, and you foolishly let yourself believe that it's all your doing. But the twitch is followed by a hiss as the leads sever themselves from her body, and the whole of her seems to tremble beneath you as the panels slide back into place, and the pin-point red lights flare up, one by one. Her eyes open, burn yellow as they always have, and then her lips curl into a smile.

     That's something none of her other forms have done before. She's never gone so far as to simulate muscles in her face, to etch out expressions for you to read; and in that moment, she's no less human than you are. You're both on the same level, and you desperately, achingly want to understand why she is what she is. 

     It's no longer as simple as accepting her as she is; you can't put it all down to her programming. Whatever she was designed for has fallen out of memory, forcefully deleted from her system, and she's evolved far beyond her intended purpose. 

     She parts her lips, and you're still trying to throttle her.

     “While I don't require oxygen as you do, I _am_ capable of exhaling several varieties of toxin. ”

     You're pleading with yourself to release her, but no matter how futile you know it to be, you just can't bring yourself to let go. GLaDOS isn't going to gas you to death, you've come too far for that and her understanding of organic mortality is embedded too deep into her programming for her to override it in a fit of anger, but she won't let you off easily, either.

     Her hands wrap around your wrists. She's stronger than anyone of her size should rightly be, and she could break all the bones there with a single squeeze, but she doesn't even pull your hands away. She rights herself, slowly, and you back away, scramble to your feet, knowing she's about to stand.

     GLaDOS follows you across the room, taking one step forward for every step you take back, and you keep your hands on her throat, keep your eyes wide. It doesn't take long for your back to hit the rows of monitors lining the room, and GLaDOS stops when you do, smiling still.

     “Look at that,” she says, and her voice doesn't _sound_ any different, though it now comes from the back of her throat, passes between her lips. Her eyes flash and gleam, and the corners of her mouth continue to twitch, almost experimentally, and it adds a layer of intimacy to her tone that you can't escape from.  “We weigh the same. Now, under any other circumstances, I might be forced to endure a poor body-image, but luckily for me, _I'm made of metal_. What's your excuse? ”

     You're not listening to her. You're too focused on watching the way her lips curl and part, wrapping perfectly around each sound that emanates from within her. You're touching the back of her neck before you realise you've let go of her throat, fingers pressing, searching, trying to find the parts of her where the wires were embedded short moments ago; trying to find _more_ of her, because this can't be it.

     This can't be all she is. GLaDOS, wrapped up in a single form before you, free from any sockets or docks, anything that would keep her grounded. She splays a hand out on one of the monitors, close to the side of your head, and leans in closer. She moves as you could, though she's always claimed to be so much more.

     You lift your jaw, and stare her dead in the eyes. Teeth grinding together, you suck in a deep breath through your nose, immediately regretting the way it brings your chest up closer to hers. You part your lips, work your lower jaw, as if you're only now realising that something's been caught in the back of your throat all this time. 

     GLaDOS moves closer, and this time it's her forehead that's pressed to yours. Her eyes are yellow through and through, there's nothing like a pupil or iris resting against sclera, but you can still tell she's scanning your face, taking in every little flicker of your expression.

     It's novel to her, now that she can mirror anything you feel for herself.

     “You still don't have anything to say? Seriously, this is brain damage, isn't it?”

     You dig your nails in at her nape, create ripples in the synthetic skin stretched across the steel frame, and her eyes flash brighter. One of her hands comes to rest at your hip, but how can she be _touching_ you? She's GLaDOS, guidance from above, an intelligence running through wires, a robust machine that could only push you back, knock you down.

     But now she's holding you up. Pinning herself against you, and you don't hold back, because she won't. One of her hands presses beneath your tank top, and your stomach caves where her movements falter for half a second, fingers digging in as she process the new sensation. Touching is as new to her as being touched is to you.

     And yet you can't do the same in return. She's one piece, a whole, wrapped up in only herself. The tail of her jacket blends into her back, and you've broken her down so many times, torn her down to her very foundations over and over, and you can't think to do anything more to her. So you run your hands across the shell of her new form, and twist your fingers in her hair.

     She muses, quite calmly, over how fascinating this all is; there's so much more she can learn in this new form, so many new tests that are suddenly flooding into her mind. You arch up against her, biting on your lower lip, and as her hand moves higher, covering one of your breasts, you wonder if this is the closest you'll ever get to another human.

     GLaDOS says something about how it's strange that you're so lacking in _certain departments_ , compared to the rest of you, but she'll have to make the most of what she can get her hands on. _Hands_ she says, and laughs as she does so, running her fingers over your breasts to emphasis her point.

     You swallow thickly as her fingers retreat back to your stomach, though they don't linger there for long. The waist of your pants is loose enough, no matter what GLaDOS may have to say about the general shape and size of you, and you tug at her hair, hard, hoping that she'll let out some sharp, panicked sound, so that you don't have to.

     She only hums tunelessly, fingers sliding inside of you. She bows her head, mouth pressing to the side of your throat, but doesn't kiss you; doesn't even exhale against your skin. All you can do is push yourself up on tiptoes and writhe against the wall as if you're pinned down to the floor, moving against and away from her, loathing yourself more than you do her.

     “Testing will continue indefinitely, until audible results are satisfactory,” GLaDOS is kind enough to let you know, and you arch up against her as she presses at you with her thumb.

     It becomes a lot brighter in the room, all of a sudden. You have to screw your eyes shut against it, and then you actually have your arms wrapped around her shoulders, because she's the only pillar of support you have. And then you feel it tear from the back of your throat with more force than anything GLaDOS has ever done to you: a deep, strained note, a single beat of “Nn—” escaping your lips.

     You might as well be screaming. 

     GLaDOS lets you go, after that. Says something about decontamination, and then steps away from you. Not to let you recover; she's simply allowing herself a moment to process all that she's learnt about you. And, in effect, about humans in general, you suppose. 

     She stops smiling when she turns back to you, and takes hold of you by the back of your head, fingers tangled in your hair. You think she's mimicking you. You don't fight against her as she actually goes to the effort of pushing you back to your Advanced Relaxation Vault, and just rub at the hollow of your throat with one hand, as if the sound you've let out has burnt a hole there.

     “There will be plenty more tests to run from now on,” she says, sealing the door behind you. You might nod, or you might not, but either way, you fall into your bed, hoping she'll let you sleep for the next thousand years.


End file.
